A Private Members Bill was introduced in Canada’s federal parliament yesterday, which, if passed, will result in significant amendments to the official mark provisions in the Trade-marks Act. [read post]

Where a sound mark is considered to be functional and/or clearly descriptive or deceptively misdescriptive, an objection will be raised pursuant to the provisions of paragraph 12(1)(b) of the Trade-marks Act. [read post]

More importantly, the Champagne Heidsieck[2] principle can be seen as an emanation of what US trade mark lawyers call “nominative use” or “nominative fair use”: one did not use a trade mark as a trade mark by using it to identify the goods or services marked with the trade mark by the trade mark owner. [read post]